Sharpie

"Just because you do, doesn't mean the rest of us do. Ah, but what can you expect from a Saii?" This family teasing was so familiar it almost hurt, and yet Tiranês wouldn't change it. Well, no, that wasn't true. He would give almost anything for the two of them to be back home as things had been, riding across the vast steppe with the wind in their hair. "I - look, if I don't see you again, and I will, you can have this," he said, fumbling in the folds of his tunic and pulling out a tiny carved horse, probably a bead or something. The magpie tendencies of the Sarmatians were well-known among the steppe peoples, and Tiranês had not lost them. "When you do braid your hair again, wear that," he said, closing Azarion's hand around it. @Chevi

"Greek? I should have guessed from your cognomen," Rufus said, and wondered for a moment if the medicus was a freedman, which would explain his unusual attentiveness towards Rufus, a slave. "May I ask, where from in Achaia?" he asked, switching to the man's native language (or at least, the Campanian dialect of it that he spoke). Greek was the second of the two major languages spoken throughout the Empire, but Rufus didn't often get to speak it - occasionally with his master, but not very often otherwise. @Chevi

"Well, that's a genuine answer to my question. A good answer - not all answers have to encompass grand ambitions and sweeping reforms or anything, after all. There's no need for anything more than that." Now he would just have to convince her father (and probably the rest of the Senate) that Lucius' choice was an honourable one and he had not taken leave of his senses or done his best to drag the Vipsanii-Roscii name into the mud. Done right, with a properly prepared speech, he might manage that, as he had hinted at to Longinus the other day. It was possible. "Ovinia, if I could make a case for your father that Lucius has in fact done something honourable, would you be happy to marry me? Because apart from Lucius' idiocy, there's nothing against it otherwise, and I can give you all that, and more." @Sara

"You know, done right, I might stand half a chance of convincing the Senate of the honour of the path Lucius has chosen," Gaius said, musingly, adjusting his position a little and continuing in a more declamatory fashion. "When innocent people are afraid to walk the streets at night in the greatest city on earth, when good hard-working people risk dying in their beds if a fire breaks out, when the force we entrust our citizens' protection to is made up of slaves and freedmen, the lowest of the low, is it any wonder that corruption prevails? My brother has taken it upon himself to seek a position where he can root out the very worst and reform our city's vigiles, and to do this he had voluntarily forsworn the rights due to him as a patrician to take the humbler name of an equite..." he relapsed into more normal speaking tones. "Lucius will hate it, of course. He's only got himself to blame, though." @Sara

"He's tried to make it right, but - I don't think we understand each other, not really." Tertius wanted a son, but the only way Teutus had ever related to him was as a slave to his master, he didn't know how to negotiate any other way of being. And it didn't help that Tertius kept things very close to his chest and then expected those around him to react a certain way. The memory of that disastrous dinner with Wulfric loomed large in Teutus' memory. His relationship with his mother had always been so much simpler; they were the same status in the house and neither had played any sort of mind games with the other. "You've lost so much, and I want to do what I can to make it right again," he said. Though that wasn't the reason for wanting to free her; he wanted that just because she was his mother. He grasped her hands in return, before freeing one of his own hands to wipe the tears away. "Tomorrow, then, the very first thing in the morning." After that, he would take her shopping - she would need a whole new wardrobe for a whole new life. "And I think I may have to look for a domus after all," he added wryly. "Three rooms and five people is going to be a bit of a crush." Even if three of them were slaves and the same gender; he could hardly ask his mother to share with any of them, could he? @Sarah

Let's go. Well, that was as clear a command as any and Jason hurriedly picked up his own cloak, pulling it around him. The question caught him by surprise and made him pause in trying to pin the plain brown folds into place. As though he had a guilty conscience over it - which he didn't, not really. Except he sort of did. "I went down to the chariot stables, Domine," he said carefully, trying to gauge what motive might lie behind Tiberius' question. "To the White stables." Was he going to be in trouble for that? It would be the first real time he'd been in trouble with Tiberius, if so, although he'd been in trouble many many times since his capture, before he'd come to the Palace to serve his current master. He had started to relax, to let his guard down, and now he was going to pay for it. Probably. @Sarah

"Rome is... an old city with a great many vices and problems and probably isn't the best example of what it means to live like a Roman," Teutus said, aware of the irony in his words - the Romans in Rome weren't the best version of the Romans in the Roman Empire. "My father is... a complicated man. His time in Germania changed him, I think - though I was very young when he went and don't really remember what he was like back then. But a lot of things happened and... he wants to be in control of everything around him, the people and what they do, what they want. You being here... it shows him that he's not in control and he doesn't like that. Or when things are too difficult, or when he thinks there's something under the surface that people aren't telling him." It wasn't personal but the personal dislike (or whatever it was that Tertius had shown) was a symptom. A symptom that had hurt, he thought. Wulfric was a wide-eyed young man looking for the best in people - it would be so easy for the more streetwise people in Rome to take advantage of that. And Tertius was so used to looking for ulterior motives in people that when presented with someone who appeared not to have an ulterior motive at all, it confused him. "The sister and the other brother are both under Tertius' control, I think you should not think of them as family either," he said gently. Peregrinus was going to grow up a Roman patrician and follow the political and military career path that was the cursus honorum, the course of honours, and Antonia would eventually marry, probably a Senator, and have children of her own - it was how the world worked, here. "Rome is not the Empire, though it is the heart of it. There's far more to see, if you want to see it." @Atrice

"The warriors of my people wear their hair in braids, too," Jason said. "The men have moustaches as well, but I was too young to be able to grow a proper moustache before I was taken." He'd had the braids though. He'd been kneeling in the grass, a hand viciously twisted into his braids, pulling his head up to expose his throat to the threat of a sword... and then, once they'd done what they'd done to Azarion, and to him, they'd hacked the braids off with that same sword, a calculated humiliation on top of the dishonour. The Romans kept their hair short and their faces clean-shaven, and expected their slaves to do likewise (the males ones, anyway). Jason had grown his hair out, a bit; it now brushed the collar of his tunic and he had to keep pushing it out of his eyes. That was preferable to looking exactly like his Roman masters, though. An idea began to stir, and he found himself trying to work out which strands of hair could be incorporated into a braid to both keep his hair out of his face and to try to emulate, however simply, his old warrior braids in a way that wouldn't anger his Roman master. If that was even possible. @Atrice

"It's doing well - my business, I mean. I was my father's secretary for years, I've got skills and it's a good way to use them." He sighed. "We'll never know, whether my father would have or not, if he could. He - I - He promised me my freedom for years... I stopped believing him, in the end. It was a surprise when he did it, in the end." It was all a mess, a total mess. Hopefully he could make sure his own household didn't have all that emotional tangle to deal with. "And then he was trying to find a way that he could actually adopt me and make it official, except I'm a freedman and he's a senator, and Charis got pregnant in the meantime and had a boy and - I think he just took the easy route in the end." And it hurt, after all the promises and reassurances. And that's what Tertius didn't understand, how deeply that had hurt. "So, I'll make my own way - you'll be proud of it when you see what I've got so far, Mama. And I'm not going to make the same mistakes my father did. I'm not going to promise something over and over and then never do it, or only do it when it's too late to mean anything." He took a breath and stopped walking so that he could look at her, properly. "I'd like you to run my household, Mama, but only if you want to. Because... because tomorrow, we're going to the Temple of Liberty and I am going to set you free. I promise." @Sarah

It only took Jason a moment to retrieve his master's cloak (and his own, just in case) and a little longer to drape and pin it around Tiberius' shoulders to his satisfaction. Whether he was content to merely walk among the houses and temples of the Palatine complex, or whether he wanted to wander further into the city, Jason would be with him unless specifically told otherwise. It was an invisible leash and Jason had found it extremely frustrating in his early days as a slave. Now, though, he was older and had settled to it a little more. And a walk outside was at least to be outside rather than indoors. "Will there be anything else, Domine?" he asked, stepping back once the cloak was pinned satisfactorily. @Sarah

"My brother is an idealist," Gaius said, and drew Ovinia into the shelter of another portico, to be out of the worst of the wind. "He wants to reform the vigiles - I'm not sure what he has in mind, precisely, but he wants to try to do something so that they're known for helping people and not just standing by, for preventing crimes and catching criminals - I don't know. He wants the moon, I think." He smiled at her. "And what do you want, Ovinia Camilla? What would you do, if you could?" @Sara

"No, no, no, you've missed something," Gaius said, holding his cup up and intoning with the wisdom of the ages. "Step one, get very very drunk. Step two, deal with the roaring hangover. Step three is find Lucius a family." How long it would take between finding Lucius a family and finding himself a wife remained to be seen. He might already have done that step - gods, he hoped that Ovinia's family wouldn't take it too badly, he was beginning to like her and thought that Longinus would like her too. "Judea's a proconsular appointment, isn't it? Would you take another term as legate if Praetextatus gets the Proconsulship there and asks for you? There's no reason he wouldn't ask for you - not with all your experience. Unless you're going for that Praetorship, that is." He had a year - two years! to figure out what his own career path would look like once he'd done his term as Aedile. Even supposing he got it - and there were twelve Aediles, there was no reason at all that he wouldn't get it. @Sara

"Yes, I could have said no," Gaius allowed. "And crushed my brother completely - despite everything, I do love him. He said he was picking apples when he met you. The day you came to dinner, he was helping the slaves prepare the food. He came back home once with a jar of olives after minding someone's stall for them in the marketplace. If it isn't this, I don't know what it will be - and the equites are as honourable as any patrician. It wouldn't be the first time a patrician got himself adopted into a lower-ranking family - Clodius Pulcher did it so that he could become a people's tribune." Which wasn't the same thing at all. "It turns out that I would do rather a lot to see my brother truly happy," he said. Lucius would probably never realise quite how much. "I'm still going to run for Aedile next year, just because my brother's ambition has taken a peculiar turn doesn't mean that mine has," he added, trying to figure out Ovinia's suddenly brittle mood. @Sara

"To be honest, I'm not sure how keen she is on the match, really." There had always been something a little... reserved about Ovinia. Gaius hadn't minded; he liked talking with her, spending time with her, whether in one of the various public gardens Rome boasted, or exploring the Porticus Liviae or the Emporium Magnum, or any of the other touristy places Rome had to offer. "You've done Britannia three times? Four times? I'm sure you wouldn't mind a change of scenery - I hear Judea is nice and warm, or there's all the Parthian cavalry to contend with, though you'll be stuck building forts if the rumours are true." He shrugged. "I don't have even a daughter to leave things to, and my only brother is going to be an equite so I can hardly leave everything to him. A certain amount of it, yes of course, but..." He would be happy to return to the legions at some unspecified point in the future once all this mess was ironed out properly. If it could be. @Sara

She hadn't told her father. Well, that was something, for now. He started walking again. "He came home a few weeks ago, to tell me that he'd passed an insula on fire and the vigiles weren't trying to rescue anyone inside - well, most of the vigiles in attendance weren't. But there was one, I believe a centurion or whatever ranks they have, who went in with Lucius - oh yes, my brother risked his own life - to save a family. I've never seen Lucius so... animated about anything as he was when he was telling me all this. He wants to change the system somehow, wants to improve things. He's never shown the slightest interest in politics or the army but this... I don't have the heart to stand in his way over this." Why it mattered to Ovinia was something Gaius couldn't fathom - she wasn't thinking about marrying Lucius, was she, and it seemed to matter in a deeper way than maybe ruining plans for her marriage to Gaius. @Sara

"Any understanding I may have with Ovinia Camilla gets cut off by her father," Gaius rejoined. He rather liked Ovinia; despite their initial awkwardness together, he thought they were getting on and things could progress to a more formal arrangement and marriage agreement. But not if Lucius ended up with his harebrained scheme going ahead. Gaius had all the power and could stop it... and wasn't stopping it. He wondered sometimes if he was his own worst enemy, rather than Lucius. "Praetor would only be for one year and then you might end up with a governorship somewhere - I could see you as Propraetor of a province somewhere - Dacia, maybe, Raetia, Syria..." @Sara

"That's.... yes. That's my news. He wants desperately to do something to help people, won't consider the cursus honorum as he should and decided he wants to be vigiles praefectus. Which is an equite position, and the only way he can do that is to become an equite by adoption into an equite family. Lucius something something Roscianus, he'll be." He had managed his recital in a flat tone and stopped walking. "It's all true. I don't know what else to say." She hadn't looked happy when she had greeted him. "Has your father...?" He wasn't quite sure how to finish the question. Had she been told that any arrangement between them was off? He supposed that was the main question, but didn't want to outright ask it and sound selfish. "I suppose it was a shock to see him like that," he managed. If he had had any inkling at all, he would have banned Lucius from doing anything of the sort until everything had been arranged. @Sara

"I don't know," Gaius admitted. He didn't have the brilliance of Aulus Calpurnius Praetextatus, this year's consul prior. Gaius was a more stolid type, who would execute orders well, would do his best to delegate what he couldn't do and whose initiative wasn't lacking but wasn't always quite on the money. "I think aedile next year - or at least, I'm running for it, who knows whether I'll get it. I can't see myself becoming consul, not like your friend Calpurnius Praetextatus. Maybe Praetor, though - we'll see." He had ambition, just not enough to worry about whether he got to a particular rank - not that Lucius had noticed or cared. "Though, who knows if that's even going to happen after all this mess with my brother," he added. "He's great at causing problems but I never see him around clearing them up afterwards." @Sara

"Well, I never said I didn't have news, but it's about Lucius, so it'll keep for a moment." She had set a rather brisk pace - unsurprising, really, if she was that cold. "What did you see - oh no, don't tell me you saw Lucius doing something he shouldn't have been doing." Oh, Hades - had she seen Lucius that day, when he'd returned home smelling of smoke with a hole (probably more than one) charred into his tunic, to announce that he wanted to join the vigiles? He had started going grey since his return from the Legions and would happily blame every single grey hair on his incorrigible brother! @Sara

"That's why you get your secretary to read through everything and tell you the gist of each letter - the man's a secretary, I presume he can read." He was tempted to stick his tongue out at his former legate, but manfully resisted the temptation. There had been things that had never reached Longinus' desk, that Gaius had dealt with on his own without the Legate's needing to be disturbed. "That's what Tribunes are for, in case you didn't realise - you must have been one yourself, once?" He'd rather enjoyed it, when he'd found his feet and grown into the authority the position gave him. His was much more ordered neat mind than Longinus' which operated in bursts of creativity that made Gaius groan as he tried to make a workable plan from something Longinus had just tossed out on the spur of the moment. @Sara

"Gardens in the winter are rather cold - will you be warm enough?" She was wearing much thinner clothing than his, after all. Things felt a little awkward between them for some reason - had she heard about Lucius? He should tell her about Lucius, she knew his brother, though maybe not well. She'd be bound to hear it eventually, anyway, best to hear it from him first. And if she already knew about it, she'd wonder why he hadn't told her and whether she could trust him. Why was life so complicated when it really didn't need to be! "I suppose you'll warm up a bit once you're moving," he said. "If not, we can find somewhere to shelter, if you need to." @Sara

"I want to find him a good family, whether among my clients or yours. Hades. I don't think I want my own brother to be one of my clients, perhaps I ought to go through yours to find him a new family. Lucius Vipsanius Roscius, you unutterable headache!" He raised his newly refilled winecup in an ironic toast before lowering it again a moment later. "You've got a secretary, you know. What you need to do, is delegate all the correspondence to him so that you can just spend one afternoon a week signing things, it makes life so much easier. Ask him to sort out the really important stuff that you need to read, and just skim the rest. Don't keep putting it off because it makes the pile grow bigger every time you look at it." He'd been just the same as a legate, and it had taken a while to figure out a system that worked, but Gaius had managed it in the end. @Sara @Sara

"Despite everything, I do want him to be happy, you know," Gaius admitted. Right now, his brother's happiness was taking precedence over his own, which was all wrong, and would probably upset Lucius if he ever learned of it. "I think I want to get very drunk," he added a moment later. "It won't solve anything but right now I don't think I can solve anything sober anyway." @Sara

Was that a note of sadness, of regret, in Horatia's laugh? Maybe. "All the more reason to treasure every moment, Horatia, my dove," he said. He couldn't promise her that he'd be with her no matter what, and knew he couldn't make such a promise. But he promised himself that he would move Elysium and Hades to be able to have his family accompany him wherever he ended up next. He wasn't about to miss out on the early days of his third child, and Horatia would doubtless want the support - even though he would provide her with all the necessaries and slaves money could buy to ensure this child had as good a start as possible. It was going to be a fine balancing act with the older two, as well, no doubt. "You are even more beautiful to me now than you were when you were eighteen, my own darling," he told her, blue eyes meeting blue eyes. @Sara

"Easy to laugh when it's not your family that's caught right in the middle of the latest scandal," Gaius said. Thank the gods that Vipsania Roscia wasn't anywhere near the city right now! "The only way to come through a scandal is for everyone else in a family to behave impeccably," he said. Maybe he should wait a bit until all this had blown over before he married. Maybe he should hurry up and marry Ovinia before it all came out - no, her brother would surely make her divorce him if it came out so soon. "I don't suppose there's some alternative we've completely missed, that means Lucius can have some sort of honourable career as a patrician somewhere?" At least, if Lucius did pursue this course of action, adoption would mean he'd change his name, putting some distance between himself and gens Vipsania. And he was the younger son anyway. @Sara